No, this doesn't belong in Persuasion. Pure conspiracy-theory stuff (everything is "rigged" just as in Sanders and Trump). I agree whole-heartedly with the commenter above who pointed to Catherine Rampell's sane and dispassionate account of this sad episode of pseudo-empowerment in the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/01/gamestop-is-not-morality-tale/). If your draw to Persuasion is that you wish to hear the delusive conspiracy theories on the left and right shouting at each other without a common basis in agreed facts, you're in the wrong place. First we have to establish, without resort to alternative facts based on conspiracy theories, what is actually going on. Right now, that seems to be that a lot of small investors are losing their shirts, after having got caught up in a typical social-media stampede. The author quotes one inciter of this stampede as saying "The only way to beat a rigged game is to rig it even harder.” I'm sure the SEC will have a word or two to say about this, eventually (it's been catastrophically slow in its response, perhaps because of Trump holdovers), since market-rigging is illegal in this country, as I hope it remains. Shame on the author for suggesting, on the grounds of his conspiracy theory that everything is rigged anyway, that it's ok for supposed outsiders (and it's becoming less clear by the minute that those who profited by the GameStop run-up were actually the little guys) to "rig the game even harder" -- that way lies madness. I very much hope that Persuasion's decision to publish this was a one-off mistake. If I see more of this kind of thing here, I'm leaving.